Origen

Origen of Alexandria
Origen (ca. 182 - ca. 251) was a Christian scholar and
theologian and one of the most
distinguished of the
Fathers of the early
Christian Church. He is thought to have been born at Alexandria,
and died at Caesarea. His writings are important as the first
serious intellectual attempt to describe Christianity.

Biographical sketch

Origenes Adamantius was born to a Christian family (most likely
in Alexandria), the oldest of seven children. He was initially
trained in both secular and religious literature by his father
Leonides (who was exceedingly proud of his son's learning). The
burden of caring for the family fell upon Origen at the age of
seventeen when his father was martyred, so he began to teach. His
classes proved so popular that he had to divide them, leaving
beginners to an assistant, reserving the more advanced for
himself.

Origen lived in extreme austerity. Eusebius
related that in his rashness he castrated himself, but that account
may not be accurate. He was bold in his admiration for martyrs, and
many of his students suffered in the persecutions. Despite his lack
of care for his own life, he was spared because many pagan
philosophers and Christian heretics came to him for instruction.
(The Neoplatonist Porphyry was an early acquaintance.)

His range of learning was vast. In addition to his father's
instruction, Origen also studied under Ammonius Saccas and
Clement of Alexandria.
For the sake of biblical exegesis, he learned
Hebrew. His knowledge of the philosophies of the
day, especially Platonism, was profound. While still living in
Alexandria, he began to write and compile books. One of the
earliest and most significant was De principiis, one of the first
efforts toward a systematic theology. Another work was his
Hexapla, an enormous edition of the Bible arranged in six
columns. It contained the Hebrew text, a Greek transliteration of
the Hebrew, the Septuagint, and the
Greek versions by Symmachus, Aquila, and Theodotion. The Hexapla
was a great aid in the study of the Scriptures.

So famous did he become that Mamaea, mother of Emperor Alexander
Severus, summoned him to Antioch to instruct her. On his way to
Greece, he was ordained as a priest by the bishop of Caesarea. That
action was uncanonical and was protested by his own bishop of
Alexandria. As a result, he never returned to Egypt but settled
down in Caesarea, where he taught for the remainder of his life.

Constantly called upon all his life to preach (even when he was a
layman), he finally, after he had passed the age of sixty, allowed
his homilies to be recorded by shorthand experts. Toward the end of
his life (circa 250), he was seized by civil authorities and
tortured in an effort to make him apostatize. The persecution,
although very severe, failed in its purpose. But it may have
contributed to his death not long after. Thus he died, not a
martyr, but a confessor.

Origen wrote an incredible number of books but the total body of
his work has not been preserved. What has been preserved has come
down only in part in Greek, the rest in Latin translation. His
leading Western interpreter was Tyrannius Rufinus, a friend of
Jerome. All of Origen's work was, at least in
theory, based on the literal text of Scripture, which he believed
to be historical. Origen's exegesis of the text was often
allegorical and typological, a style following that adopted by
Alexandrian commentators on the Homeric epics. To Origen, Christ
was the center and all Scripture must be interpreted in his light.
That meant, for Origen, speculation on the spiritual significance
of the literal.

Along with De principiis and Hexapla he also wrote commentaries
on Genesis, the Psalms, Song of Songs, Lamentations, the prophets,
Matthew, John, and the Pauline corpus. He is the one who made the
well-known remark, "But who wrote the letter to the Hebrews, only
God really knows." His homilies treated Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, Song of Songs, Isaiah,
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Luke.

The details of Origen's life were recorded by his student Gregory
Thaumaturgus in a panegyric, by Eusebius in his history, and by
Jerome in several references. The first two were favorable. So was
Jerome at first, but he later came to disapprove of Origen's
exegesis. Yet, Jerome called him the second
teacher of the church after Paul. Some of Origen's teachings were
condemned by the
Fifth Ecumenical Council.
The West was more favorable to his writings, albeit usually not by
name. But in quite modern times, his fame and his thought have been
more or less rehabilitated, owing to the effort to distinguish his
doctrines from those attributed to him by his later followers.